Piotr Kantor (left) and Bartosz Losiak are keeping Polish hopes alive by reaching the last four

Myslowice, Poland, June 8, 2013 – The line-ups for the semifinals at the inaugural FIVB U23 Beach Volleyball World Championships were decided on Saturday, with four different nations represented in both genders.

Brazil is the only country that can claim double gold, and five of the eight semi-finalists are from European nations. Host Poland still has a chance of securing a gold medal as No. 1 seed Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak reached the last four.

Austrians into semis with three from three

Austria’s Lorenz Petutschnig and Tobias Winter may have faced a busy day with three matches, but by the time they returned home they had booked themselves a place in the semifinals.

They began by knocking out Ukraine’s highly fancied Sergiy Popov and Valeriy Samoday 2-1 (21-19, 18-21, 15-13). Next up were Poland’s Maciej Kosiak and Maciej Rudol, who they saw off 2-0 (21-17, 21-16) and in their quarterfinal they defeated Latvia’s Haralds Regza and Abolins Armands 2-0 (21-18, 22-20).

Also through are Poland’s reigning FIVB U21 world champions, Kantor and Losiak, Brazilian duo Vitor Goncalves Felipe and Marcio Guadie Ley and Rihards Finsters and Aleksandrs Solovejs of Latvia. MORE

Age gap not enough to hold back Brazilians

They may be separated by eight years, but the age difference was not enough to stop Brazil’s Eduarda Santos Lisboa and Thais Rodrigues Ferreira from reaching the women’s semifinals.

Santos Lisboa is one of the youngest players at the tournament at 14-years-old, while Rodrigues Ferreira is eight years her senior at 22. However, they played like seasoned veterans to beat the Netherlands Rimke Braakman and Jolien Sinnema 2-0 (21-18, 22-20) in front of the centre court crowd.

Also into the last four are Canada’s Melissa Humana-Parades and Taylor Pischke, Germany’s Victoria Bieneck and Isabell Schneider and Eliska Galova and Adela Machova of the Czech Republic. MORE

Long trip earns rich rewards for St Lucians

It is a long way from the sunny, golden beaches of the Caribbean to the courts of southern Poland, but that has not stopped St Lucia’s two representatives from making history as the first two players from their country to compete at an FIVB age-group world championships.

Julian Bissette and Gillan Octave are the two players representing the island nation of 176,000 people and, while they may have travelled nearly 10,000 kilometres to get to Myslowice, they are in no doubt what their participation means. MORE

32 teams per gender took place in the main draw of the inaugural FIVB U23 Beach Volleyball World Championships. The main draw started on June 6 and the tournament runs through until Sunday, June 9 when both the men’s and women’s finals take place.

Myslowice, located 70km from Poland’s ancient capital Krakow, is hosting an FIVB age-group tournament for the third time, after successfully hosting the U19 and U21 version in 2006 and 2007.

It has also regularly hosted stops on the FIVB World Tour – the first tournament was a women-only tournament in 2008, as was the 2011 event. In 2009, 2010 and 2012 it was the men who lit up the sand.